--- title: Ideas on the move: numbers, paper, letters, chess and news — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Ideas on the move: numbers, paper, letters, chess and news», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Ideas travel like a football passed down a long line of players: the digits you write in maths came from India, --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / Ideas on the move: numbers, paper, let… # Ideas on the move: numbers, paper, letters, chess and news Lesson 75 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/0/) — Ideas travel like a football passed down a long line of players: the digits you write in maths came from India, were passed on by scholars writing in Arabic, and reached Europe through a merchant's son from Pisa, Fibonacci, in 1202. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/1/) — In Europa Universalis «institutions» like the printing press spread from province to province over a few game decades; in real life ideas often took centuries, and sometimes people pushed back, as when money-changers in Florence banned the new numbers in 1299. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/2/) — The letter A began as a little drawing of an ox's head, paper crept from China to Spain over a thousand years, chess was born in India, and a Cinderella story was written down in China around 850, long before any cartoon. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/3/) — News used to travel at the speed of a horse or a ship; now it flies round the world in seconds, true and false alike, and studies suggest false stories can spread even faster than true ones. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/4/) — So a good habit is old and new at once: ask where an idea came from, and check before you share. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/5/) — Our digits came from India, spread through scholars writing in Arabic such as al-Khwarizmi around 825, and reached Europe through writers such as Fibonacci in 1202. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/6/) — In 1299 the money-changers' guild of Florence banned the new digits in account books, fearing they were easy to alter; good ideas can take centuries to win. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/7/) — Paper was made in China by about 100 CE; it reached Samarkand around 751, Baghdad around 794, Spain in the 1100s and later the rest of Europe. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/8/) — The alphabet began with signs made by workers in Egypt and Sinai around 1800 BCE; the first letter, which became A, was a picture of an ox's head. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/9/) — The Phoenicians spread their alphabet around the Mediterranean from about 1050 BCE; the Greeks added vowels, and the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets grew from the Greek one. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/10/) — Between about 800 and 200 BCE great thinkers lived in China, India, Persia, Israel and Greece, among them Confucius, the Buddha and Socrates; they did not know each other, and some historians call this the Axial Age while others say the pattern is too neat. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/11/) — News of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 took days to reach London, and news of Lincoln's death in 1865 took about 12 days to reach Europe; after the Atlantic telegraph cable of 1866 news crossed in minutes. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/12/) — Chess began in India around 600 CE and spread to Persia, the Arab world and Europe; the queen became the strongest piece only around 1475, in Spain. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/13/) — A Chinese Cinderella story, Ye Xian, was written down around 850 CE, and similar stories are told in many cultures. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/14/) — About 2.3 billion people are Christians, about 2 billion Muslims and about 1.2 billion Hindus, and about 1.9 billion people have no religion, according to a large 2020 count. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/15/) — About 2,000 years ago Hero of Alexandria made a spinning steam toy, but nobody used steam to do work until the first steam engines around 1700; a working engine needed strong metal parts, plenty of fuel like coal and a real job to do, such as pumping water out of mines. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/16/) — A large 2018 study of social media found that false news spread faster and further than true news. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/75-ideas-on-the-move-numbers-paper-letters-chess-and-news/17/) — In the 1100s scholars in Toledo, in Spain, translated Arabic books into Latin, bringing Greek and Arab science to European readers. - ← previous: [Cities then and now: the biggest cities of every age and of today](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/74-the-biggest-cities-of-every-age-and-of-today/) - next →: [When civilizations meet: conquest, colonies and freedom, seen from both sides](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/76-when-civilizations-meet-seen-from-both-sides/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)